In an attempt to help researchers pursue new ideas, the University of Michigan started a plan yesterday (May 9) that would offer $20,000 per faculty, but only if the academics create a team of three, one of whom must be from a different field, reported The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The scheme is part of the University of Michigan’s MCubed program, which has a budget of $15 million to spend over the next two years to fund some 250 projects. Although not a huge amount for life-science researchers, administrators hope that the funds will help investigators test pilot projects that can then be used to leverage larger grants from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

"There were a lot of areas that I just couldn't explore because I didn't have specific grant funding to deviate from what I was supposed to be doing," Mary Sue Coleman, Michigan's president and a former biochemist, told The Chronicle. This program, she says, is intended to bridge that gap.